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Tillman and Jackson Open Civilian Season

September 20, 2010

Civilian's Generalissima McLellan

Tillman and friend

GessoHead has returned to the swamp and someone dropped an art bomb on DC. Honestly, so much art to see this last couple of weeks, the responsibility is overwhelming. I can but try.

Civilian Art Projects, one of my favorite scrappy art spaces, has a new home. It’s just up the stairs from the old home, but in this case a floor makes a hell of a difference. The space Jayme McLellan has scooped are the gallery rooms in the buildings formerly known as the Warehouse. Practically every serious artist who has lived in or near DC in the last 15 years has shown art in these rooms. The good karma is palpable and I can’t think of anyone better suited to inherit it from our hero Molly Ruppert.

Jayme’s taste is idiosyncratic and well-defined and she programs to a young audience which she knows well. The current show features Trish Tillman, a recent MFA who defected from DC to New York (but let’s not hold that against her) and Erick Jackson.

they assure me it's safe

Tillman cut paper

I’m a big Trish fan. This show is called “In Irons”, a reference to the position of frustrating stasis that a sailboat reaches when it is pointed too directly into the wind. The work does achieve that sort of push-pull – come on ahead but watch out for the dangerous stuff. The theme is clearly announced by the guillotine-like sculpture that hangs over your head as you enter the room. My favorite work continues to be Tillman's cut paper assemblages. These are in strong colors not generally associated with what has historical connotations as a “feminine” technique and full of foreboding pointy shapes and barbed wire. But yet somehow still inviting, as her intention was.

Paul So of the Hamiltonian came

Erick Jackson piece

Erick Jackson is a story-teller. In this show, called “Nightscaping”, the story is a take on the Charles Schulz Halloween story, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” where, according to Jackson, “kids are having a Halloween part in what looks like a bombed-out house. The pieces are darkly mordant and the colors sometimes oddly discordant – an orange moon in a greyed mauve sky and a bubble gum pink that shows up often. It's a dark world, full of uncertainty.

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